Nicaragua’s Slow Collapse into Dictatorship
How does one of the men who helped end a 43-year dictatorship turn into a dictator himself? That’s the question surrounding Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, who led the Sandinista revolution that toppled the Somoza family in 1979, lost the presidency in 1990, and returned to power in 2006. He has spent the last two decades systematically dismantling any institution that could get in his way.
For context, many Nicaraguans saw the Sandinistas as liberators after decades of rule by the Somoza family. President Daniel Ortega first took power in 1985 but lost in 1990 to Violeta Chamorro. He returned to running in 1996 and 2001, but lost both times. In 2006, when he finally came back to the presidency, most people in the country took that in their stride.
That was to change over the next few years. In 2009, President Ortega convinced the Supreme Court of Nicaragua that the constitutional ban on consecutive re-election did not apply to him, and in 2014 the constitution was formally amended to eliminate presidential term limits. Later on, he assumed control over the national police and filled the courts with loyalists.
The national social security system was cut on April 18, 2018, sending thousands of Nicaraguans into the streets. Police and allied armed groups fired live ammunition. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recorded 325 dead, more than 2,000 injured, and more than 550 detained and prosecuted.
Another 300 health workers were fired for treating wounded protesters, and at least 80 students were expelled from the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua. President Ortega’s government tried to portray the protest as an effort to overthrow the government.
Enrique Cuadra, a Nicaraguan student activist and former political prisoner, was among those caught up in the crackdown. On April 18th, he witnessed elderly protesters being beaten on his way to university, and by the next morning he had joined a group of students organizing a sit-in in their support. Soon after, he was expelled from his public university and had to enroll again in a private one to continue with his studies.
“What started as a decision to accompany some elderly people ended up completely changing my life,” said Cuadra.
On February 4, 2021, he was at home when the housekeeper told him police were outside. He walked out to find his house full of heavily armed officers who took him to a police station, destroyed his room, took his phone and computer, and interrogated him without a lawyer or formal charges. Recalling how he was unable to leave his house for more than ten months after his release because the police kept posted outside his house.
“I was never afraid for myself. What really scared me was that they would do something to my family because of what I was doing. Fear was not something abstract; it was part of daily life,” said Cuadra.
President Daniel Ortega took steps to ensure that he could run for re-election without serious competition by 2021. In the months leading up to the presidential election, his government arrested seven candidates, including former allies, business leaders and prominent journalists.
He was unopposed on the ballot and got 75.9 percent of the votes. The result was rejected by many, including the United States, the European Union, and the Organization of American States. Freedom House downgraded Nicaragua to “Not Free,” a status the country still holds.
In August of 2022, the government had set its sights on the Catholic Church after the election.
Bishop Rolando Alvarez was placed under house arrest after refusing to comply with a government order to leave the country. On February 9, 2023, Bishop Alvarez and 222 other Nicaraguan citizens were forced out of the country and flown to the United States overnight, with their Nicaraguan citizenship revoked without a way to reacquire it.
“My own people, suffering because a man who thinks he has all the power, makes them feel like they are nothing but just people under his control. Ortega should not have done that to Alvarez and all the 222 people he had forcefully pushed out of Nicaragua,” said junior Amy Sanchez.
Many of the students and activists who organized the 2018 protests ended up in exile in the years that followed, pushed out either through direct deportation or because it had become too dangerous to stay. Some have gone on to lobby for international attention to Nicaragua from outside the country, appearing before human rights bodies and foreign governments to ensure the issue is not forgotten.
“Exile was not what we chose, but we learned to turn it into a space for struggle as well,” said Cuadra
In 2018, the National Police raided the offices of El Confidencial (an independent Nicaraguan news outlet) and the investigative television program, Esta Semana, confiscating equipment without a warrant. The IACHR received reports of 117 attacks against journalists and media workers between October and December of that year.
Later, in 2021, La Prensa, Nicaragua’s oldest newspaper, was raided and shut down. El Confidencial now publishes 100% outside Costa Rica, and its founder Carlos has left Nicaragua to keep it alive for many.
The Washington Office on Latin America has documented how President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo have placed their children in posts through the military and government, with his son, Laureano Ortega Murillo, now handling much of the country’s foreign investment portfolio.
Daniel Ortega is now serving his fourth consecutive term as president. In Nicaragua, there is no functioning opposition party, no independent press in the country, and no civil society organizations with legal standing to challenge the government.
